


Staking Claim

by plastics



Category: Ready or Not (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Hand Jobs, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:07:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27159766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/pseuds/plastics
Summary: It’s hardly even a surprise when Alex shows up on his doorstep. He looks good. Vibrant. Daniel doesn’t know what to make of it.
Relationships: Alex Le Domas/Daniel Le Domas
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	Staking Claim

**Author's Note:**

  * For [falsettodrop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsettodrop/gifts).



Daniel is meticulous in maintaining his sleep. His mattresses are custom designed and replaced every three years. The sheets are fine, and the curtains are thick enough there is little difference between noon and midnight within his bedroom. Lined in the cabinet above his ensuite sink is a collection of pill bottles providing every combination of melatonin, antihistamines, and benzodiazepines that a man could dream of. When paired with lifestyle that holds steady regardless of whether he allows the world to go a little blurry around the edges by sundown, 5 p.m. somewhere, lunch—brunch—Daniel sleeps well. Not restfully, peacefully, but deeply. He wishes for nothing more.

Recently, Daniel has been dreaming. Unsubtle things, really, filled with blood, Alex, his heart pumping fire through his veins. When he awakens, it’s with the sort of heaviness that feels like he’s sinking. He thinks about cutting down on the booze. He thinks about telling his doctor to raise his dosages.

But a man develops a sense for this sort of thing over a lifetime, familiar from weddings, funerals, everything in between. Family is impossible to ignore.

  
  


There are whispers, of course, almost embarrassingly well-worn. The favorite whore of accounting's VP has apparently run back to Sudbury. A marketing intern stops showing up for his shifts—no one could remember his name, with bright ideas but dim enough in every other way that his absence is easy to build over and forget. Third-shift delivery drivers are similarly prone to simply disappearing. If the Le Domas’ businesses seem disproportionally struck, well, they are such a large company, otherwise so overwhelmed with good fortune. 

  
  


It’s hardly even a surprise when Alex shows up on his doorstep. He looks good. Vibrant. Daniel doesn’t know what to make of it.

“I thought we agreed on you staying gone,” Daniel says, voice clipped, like it had been a real, civilized discussion instead of a brawl that left him scraped and bloodied, deep enough that seeing Alex again now still had something to bandage over.

“Hm, I don’t really remember agreeing to that,” Alex responds. “Can I come in?”

His brother has always been pale, but (distressingly) Daniel can’t remember if his eyes have always been that blue, his lips so pink. He thinks they must have been. This is not the first time they’ve caught Daniel’s eye, after all.

Daniel has always known himself to be a weak creature. For years, he’s imagined Alex’s absence as the closest thing to penance he’d ever pay, the closest thing to discipline, but now it’s clear that he hadn’t been carrying that weight at all. If he had been, he’d be strong enough now to close the door, to tell Alex that he meant what he said, that he never wanted to see Alex again.

Instead, Daniel steps aside. When Alex still hesitates, he snaps, “Don’t just stand there.”

Daniel can’t help but watch closely as Alex invites himself deeper into the condo, desperate to see what the time has done, desperate to see that Alex is still the same—he will always be Daniel’s brother, which is perhaps the most damning continuity. 

“Smaller place,” Alex notes.

“Yeah, well,” Daniel says. “It’s just me now, and it’s not like I invite people over often.”

Alex makes a derisive noise that, if they were still kids, would have been followed by taunts and fighting and negotiated peace. Something in Daniel seizes at the silence. He says, trying to keep the urgency tamped down, “You know, after you missed Celine’s wedding, we figured you were out for good. Or—”

“Euphemistically ‘out for good?’” Alex fills in. He grins, sharkish. “Yeah, I’m not really worried about that anymore.”

“What’s that even supposed to mean? Did you find a cursebreaker or something?” It’s a part of the story that Daniel’s always found particularly ingenious about their family’s whole origin story: strike a deal with a man leaving the old country, make him rich, and he’ll never look back again, like a hundred prosperous years here are worth more than wherever they came from, whatever had kept them safe.

“Or something,” Alex agrees.

A cure, then. Huh. As exploitable and infirm as Daniel has found contracts to be in his professional life, he can’t remember the last time he considered the one on his soul as anything other than impenetrable. Probably around the same time it started to hurt to pray, even abstractly, to anything else that could be out there.

But of course Alex found a way out. That had been the point of him leaving, right? It’s a relief. Jealousy clenches in Daniel’s chest. He says, “Were you planning on sharing, or did you just come to gloat?”

Alex smiles even wider somehow, his teeth glistening in the moody dimness that Daniel caps his lighting at. “That’s the plan.”

In a blink, Alex is in front of Daniel, and then their mouths are melding, frenzied and searching and so, so familiar. How fucking self-satisfied Daniel had been, telling himself that Alex being gone was for the best, for both of him, that it was what he wanted. His head has felt so heavy—it feels so light between Alex’s hands.

They end up on Daniel’s couch, impractical and uncomfortable, but it hardly matters with Alex in his lap, solid and safe. Daniel’s hands move frantically over his brother’s body, from his hips to his back to his arms. They’d been younger the last time they did something like this, skinny and frantic, but Alex has filled out since then. Daniel can feel his temperature rising.

“Were you stuck outside?” he pulls away to ask. Alex's mouth trails hot to his jaw, down to his neck, barely humming in acknowledgement. “You feel cold.”

“‘M fine,” Alex says, then his tongue is on Daniel’s pulse, his teeth. Daniel groans automatically, his hips twitching upwards. Fuck, he hasn’t gotten this hard this fast in longer than he can remember, but how could he not? It’s  _ Alex, _ whose hands are already yanking impatiently at the belt, button, zipper keeping Daniel caged in.

They should be talking. Alex is back. He’s claiming to be safe. They should really—

“There’ll be plenty of time,” Alex assures Daniel, lips against his ear, and, finally, his fingers around Daniel’s dick, sure and steady.

“Fuck,” Daniel gasps, his own hand squeezing automatically at the meat of Alex’s ass. His head feels so clear, like a glass filled to the brim with crystal clear, still water. Alex’s tongue is against his neck again. His hand is twisted in the hair at Daniel’s nape, drawing Daniel’s head back. He can feel his heart beating in his chest. Is it racing? Alex feels so steady.

The cut, or the prick, penetration either way, is so sharp that it doesn’t even register as a pain, but Daniel still feels it with his whole body. A noise escapes him that he can’t even recognize, caught somewhere between shock and arousal, and his whole body goes limp with it. Distantly, he hears Alex’s responding growl of delight, his body pressing closer. 

The air smells of iron. Daniel thinks he’s bleeding out into Alex’s mouth. He thinks this is ecstasy. 

When Alex kisses him, Daniel tastes himself not for the first time—rough housing, loose teeth, pick-up lacrosse games—but there’s no spitting it out now. Alex’s lips and tongue are insistent, pressed tight against Daniel’s, so he swallows, first out of obligation and then with real thirst as that heat grows within him. Alex’s hand is still jerking him off, but when Daniel finally comes, it’s a distant spark in comparison.

“Perfect,” Alex murmurs, and Daniel bites down automatically. Alex jerks back, eyes wide, as a ruby red tear drops from his lip, and on the same instinct, Daniel leans forward and licks his smile clean.

  
  


When they sleep, it’s deep and dark and whole.

  
  


The first between the two of them is an undergrad from the States, taking advantage of a long weekend, pupils like pin pricks, so giddy to be leaving with them he practically shakes with it.

When Daniel had first awoken, he’d been existentially furious (“You could have at least  _ told  _ me.”) and stayed that way for weeks, obstinate (“Would you have said yes?”) but once the thirst came—well, when had Daniel ever not bowed to a force greater than himself?

He expects to hate himself. He does, as they bring this kid up his home, strip him, lure him into his black granite shower. But that first bite, Alex guiding him once again with a hand at his nape, is better than anything else Daniel has ever felt. Like if he could taste the false promises of life itself. 

It feels like a drop in an empty bit within. Alex has to practically pry Daniel off to get any for himself.

Afterward, they don’t get out of the shower immediately, like two bloated ticks too self-satisfied to be bothered. Daniel says, “I don’t think we’re human anymore.”

“I think we were barely holding on to begin with,” Alex counters. “Fuck, our whole family. Do you have any idea how high Aunt Helene’s body count is? At least we have a reason.”

Daniel blinks, slowly. “I was under the impression that we all operated on an as-needed basis.”

“Well, that’s because you’ve always been a little idealist, my dearest brother.” He says it with a comforting pat on Daniel’s arm, reaching across the quickly-cooling corpse, and despite everything, Daniel feels his dick twitch in interest. Fuck, his heart isn’t even beating anymore, but in some ways he feels more awake now than he has in years. Decades.

“What are we supposed to do with him?” Daniel says instead. There’s still too much to chip away at still, and, like Alex had said, they have plenty of time now.

Alex waves the question off. “Cleanup's no big deal without the blood. Basic butchery.”


End file.
